CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama tapped a major campaign bundler and a former U.S. attorney who got caught up in Bill Clinton's 2001 pardons scandal to serve on the 14-member Justice Department review team announced Friday.

Alejandro Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, drew controversy in 2001 for calling the White House on behalf of Carlos Vignali, a convicted drug dealer who was seeking a presidential commutation. Mayorkas and a host of other California elected officials responded to pleas from Vignali's father, Horacio, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman whom federal agents had suspected of drug trafficking. Horacio Vignali also paid $200,000 in fees to Hugh Rodham, a brother of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a successful effort an have his son's prison sentence commuted by the outgoing president.

The House Committee of Government Reform cited Mayorkas in a report critical of Southern California politicians who pushed Clinton to release Carlos Vignali, saying Mayorkas should have been aware of Horacio Vignali's questionable background, according to a Los Angeles Times story published in March 2002.

Mayorkas told the newspaper that the criticism was fair, and he did not know the elder Vignali very well.

"It is reasonable to expect that someone in my position would do his or her due diligence to learn that information," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I made a mistake."

The Obama transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Mayorkas, who will serve on the Justice Department review team.

The team also includes Spencer Overton, a law professor at George Washington University and expert on campaign finance, who raised more than $500,000 for Obama's presidential campaign, according to a database maintained by the government watchdog group Public Citizen. Overton also sat on Obama's national finance committee. Overton will focus on Election Assistance Commission.

They join a team of 14 law scholars, corporate attorneys and former Clinton appointees who will look at civil rights, legal services and election law.

The group includes one former lobbyist, Theodore M. Shaw, a professor at Columbia University School of Law who was registered on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund through 2007.

Five of the review team members, including Mayorkas, have ties to the Clinton administration.

Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University-Bloomington, worked in the Justice Department from 1993 to 1998, including a stint in the Office of Legal Counsel, a controversial office in the Bush administration that could become the focus of review efforts.

David William Ogden, co-chair of WilmerHale's government and regulatory litigation group, served as chief of staff to Attorney General Janet Reno, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's civil division and deputy general counsel in the Defense Department.

Tom Perelli, managing partner of Jenner and Block in Washington D.C., served as deputy assistant attorney general and counsel to the attorney general from 1997 to 2001.

LaVeeda Battle, an Alabama lawyer, served in the Clinton administration on the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation‚ her area of review on Obama's transition team.